Up above Katie on the cliff, Sasha has joined her father. The Jamaican sun paints her long limbs with honey. They stand with their arms arched over their heads. Sasha’s are impossibly delicate, covered in fine golden hairs. She rises on tiptoes and without waiting launches effortlessly into the air, head tucked under, white-blonde curls streaming behind her. When her fingertips break the ocean’s surface, there is barely a ripple. Zev dives after her.
Katie’s body rides along with the thrust of the water as he plunges in, and—bobbing up and down, watching their two sleek heads approach her, grinning—she thinks to herself: Stop measuring everything. Just be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am so grateful for my agent, Erin Harris, whose enthusiasm, professionalism, and keen sense of story make great things happen (and she’s a mensch, too!). I’m truly thankful for Jodi Warshaw’s belief in this difficult story and her openness to my input, as well as the superb team at Lake Union.
A supportive, kind, and invested community makes all the difference to lonely writers. The staff, instructors, and students at GrubStreet in Boston have been crucial to my health and happiness for over a decade now. I could always count on Eve Bridburg’s unwavering belief in me as a writer to keep me going. Eve and Chris Castellani helped with advice right when I needed it most—thank you both. Also, Chris took a chance on me when I was a teaching newbie and thus unwittingly helped me achieve one of my life goals. Huge thanks to Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, who went the extra mile for me.
I benefited immensely from many generous readers. Thank you, Kathleen Buckstaff, for your passionate advocacy and hours of conversation; it’s largely because of you that this story was able to blossom. Kristi Perry listened and contributed enthusiastically as I regaled her with writing and publishing stories over many years—thank you for lovingly supporting me (even when you knew I was wrong) and for so much spot-on advice. Lynne Griffin and Lisa Borders, many thanks for your tough love and for sharing your astute understanding of narrative structure. I so appreciate Judy Sternlight’s, Laura Chasen’s, and Tiffany Yates Martin’s sharp eyes and invaluable insights, which vastly improved this book. Thank you to Greta O’Marah for being my first real reader and for your relentlessly positive perspective; to Jennifer de Poyen for putting your poetic sensibilities to work; to Susan Howard for your infectious enthusiasm; to Francesca Nelson-Smith for your encouragement; and to Lil Weiner, Candice Reed, Dawn Tice, Kathy Sherbrooke, Polly Zetterberg, and Willow Humphrey for your thoughtful, invaluable commentary. Also, I’m grateful to Dr. Tracey Milligan, Natalie Wright, Ellen Rosenthal, and Max Wiley for helping me with research.
I’m astonished by the generosity of the many authors who carved out time to read this debut and offer their endorsements (many of whom I cold-called because I so admire their work): a huge thank-you to Carol Anshaw, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Robin Black, Jenna Blum, Tim Johnston, William Landay, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, and Barbara Claypole White. What a literary community! I’m excited about paying it forward. Endless gratitude to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, and the Hemingway House for offering me beauty and quiet in which to work. I’d also like to thank the many agents and editors who took the time to read the book and respond so very kindly—it’s because of dedicated book lovers like you that we are able to share our stories with the world.
I spend summers in an incredible community that shares some resemblance to Eagle Lake. I’d like to give a warm hug to everyone there for helping create such a unique, magical place in which I’ve always felt at home.
Kevin, I can’t thank you enough; truly, words fail me.
A warm thank-you to my parents, Peter and Occu Schumann, who taught me about hard work and resilience—and also sometimes let me faff around reading and writing instead of dragging me along on hikes when I was a surly teenager. It matters to me that you are proud of what I do. Sheila O’Marah’s unflagging interest in my work helped me shift my mind-set when it really mattered. Jay O’Callahan has been a model of how I’d like to live as a storyteller—with generosity, empathy, and deep listening skills. Thanks also to Peter and Svenja O’Marah, who suffered through my frequent tardiness and distraction with such good cheer.
Q&A WITH KATRIN SCHUMANN, THE FORGOTTEN HOURS
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is the award-winning author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, a book about how the story of one crime was constructed—but also about how we grapple with our own personal histories. It tackles questions on the nature of forgiveness and whether a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. Winner of the Chautauqua Prize, it was named one of the best books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Audible.com, Bustle, Book Riot, the Times of London, and the Guardian. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo, as well as a Rona Jaffe Award, Marzano-Lesnevich lives in Portland, Maine, where she teaches at Bowdoin.
AML: The Forgotten Hours feels almost astonishingly contemporary, raising questions of consent, power differentials in sex, and #MeToo. Yet, of course, you must have begun writing the book a long time ago! How long did you work on it, and how did the idea come to you?
KS: The characters were in my head for years before I found my way into this story. It took a while to work out how to unfold the narrative so that it felt honest and nuanced and conveyed the turmoil that these kinds of cases can cause. It was incredibly important to me that I do justice to this story, and it was a struggle at times. Once I found the voice and rhythm of the narrative, the structure fell into place, and the book began to take on a life of its own. That was when I started to have fun with it on a sentence-by-sentence level and when I felt I’d actually succeeded in writing the book I set out to write.
As for the idea, in some ways, Katie is a stand-in for me. I had two close friends become embroiled in legal proceedings around separate assault and consent issues—each on polar-opposite ends of the spectrum. I saw with my own eyes what happens to the accused and the accuser. I felt immense empathy for everyone involved—and it sent me into a total tailspin. I wanted to capture that confusion.
AML: Are you surprised to find the book so urgently relevant?
KS: The conundrums around sex and consent aren’t new—it’s a problem women have been trying to get to the bottom of for centuries, but no one really wanted to hear them out. It upsets our way of seeing the world. What’s astonishing is that now, finally, it’s becoming something both men and women can talk about, and people are actively listening.
There is such shame for girls and women around this topic, so much judgment, so many biases and assumptions. And a lot of well-meaning men have had their heads in the sand. The fact that my book is coming out now seems like a real gift, because it will get people of all ages thinking more deeply and talking more openly—and those are healing conversations.
AML: Part of what makes the book feel so real, I think, is how complex every character’s actions and motivations are. John’s not a simple villain—and Katie is forced to reexamine her feelings about her former best friend, Lulu, and even her own mother, Charlie. Was the complexity of how the reader would view the characters something you were conscious of as you were writing?
KS: Yes, that’s at the very heart of the book! A friend who suffered abuse once told me, “It’s possible for people to be two things at once: kind and cruel.” Of course, it works the other way around too: “good” people are not all good; they make mistakes.
We want to see the world as black and white and fit people into silos—it makes us feel as though we have some sort of control over what happens to us (and it informs the choices we make). But the truth is that life isn’t like that. It’s far more complicated. This is something I experienced myself, and I spent years feeling torn about my loyalties. When I was able to make better sense of that bewilderment, it was an enormous turning point for me.
AML: You’ve described feeli
ng torn, and the relationships in this book feel so true to life in that way too—webs of conflicting loyalties, emotional entanglements, and histories. As a writer, I was struck by the high-wire act you did of pairing a complicated plot with intimate, nuanced portrayals of each of the characters. How did you approach that balance, and what books were inspirations to you along the way?
KS: I think the characters just felt really real to me. We all have different versions of history. We may share the same experiences, but we all feel them differently. So I took that idea and looked at it closely. I chose a single, limited point of view so that readers could form their own opinions about how “truth” is constructed. Also, a lot of editing and rewriting went into this book. It went through many drafts, and each time I thought deeply about human motivation and desire.
I tend to read very intensely and quite widely while I write, to remind myself of what writers can achieve and to figure out what my own goals are in terms of tone and story. Tim Johnston’s novel Descent was inspiring, because I so admire the fast-moving story line and the beautiful writing. Same with Carol Anshaw’s Carry the One, which does a stellar job of conveying her characters’ complexities and growth. British writers like Tessa Hadley (The Past) manage to convey an interiority that never veers into melodrama. And then other books like The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, or Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter, remind me to have fun, to take risks. They inspire me to play more with the words and ideas and characters and not be so uptight. That’s always a good reminder for us writers!
AML: It’s interesting, too, that you’ve mentioned control in thinking about characters’ motivations. Different characters in the book have different ways of trying to feel control over the complicated, difficult situations in which they suddenly find themselves. Katie’s mother distances herself from her family, including from her own children, in a way that’s very painful to Katie. Even Charlie’s father, Katie’s grandfather, Grumpy, separates himself. Yet Katie herself chooses a very different way of trying to regain her sense of control. She chooses not distance but kind of an extreme closeness to her father. She chooses to believe him absolutely. In a way she chooses him over everyone else, including even her best friend. It’s only as her trust in her father’s denials begins to crack that she starts to look into the case and revisit her memories and realize she may have been wrong. Did you know from the start of writing that you’d have her dig into the case?
KS: I knew that Katie had to go through a fact-finding mission that would release her from the constraints she’s imposed on herself and allow her to live a more authentic and independent adult life. Even though she adopts this just-get-on-with-business approach, in the process she totally loses herself. The accusation and trial come at a pivotal moment for her—right when she’s forming ideas about who she wants to be. As a consequence, she struggles to define herself and ends up making choices that are questionable. She’s looking to adults to show her the way, and they fail her. Ultimately she’s on a lonely journey.
What was hard for me to get right here in terms of storytelling is that she’s an extremely reluctant truth seeker, and when she begins digging in to the case, she hopes (rather desperately) that it will help her reestablish a sense of safety and order. But the information doesn’t give her greater control: quite the opposite. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not a necessary journey.
We all have different ways of coping with trauma. The thing is, we can’t really grow up and heal until we figure out how to face the messy, painful stuff. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Bessel van der Kolk’s nonfiction book The Body Keeps the Score helped me understand this, as did Roxana Robinson’s incredible novel about PTSD, Sparta.
AML: Katie has this get-on-with-business approach you describe, yet of course she also has this unlikely romantic partner, Zev, who seems to have a much freer approach to life—one that ultimately seems to have a big influence on her, whether she consciously realizes it at the time or not. Why did you decide to give Katie and Zev almost the same age difference as John, Katie’s father, and Lulu, Katie’s best friend, whom John is convicted of raping?
KS: I wanted the reader to think about consent in a more nuanced way. The big age gap isn’t the problem in and of itself. I thought it would be interesting to have Katie fall for a father figure who is nothing like her own father. It’s as though her subconscious won’t allow her to stop growing and learning. Also, for me, the sexual freedom that she feels with Zev is important because she finds it both threatening and liberating, and I think sex and intimacy are often complicated in that way.
AML: This connects to what I think is one of the central themes of the book: what we owe one another. Katie thinks, at one point, that there must be no greater sin than the choice her mother has made to distance herself from the family. But of course that’s a question the events in the book force Katie—and the reader—to think about more deeply: Is she really understanding the size of that sin correctly? Isn’t she ignoring another, greater sin? Is loyalty truly the highest value? What do we owe our loved ones?
KS: I could have written so much more about Charlie! I found her to be a fascinating, if opaque, character. As a mother, she’s really caught between a rock and a hard place. She’s an Englishwoman, mired in an old-fashioned “stiff upper lip” culture in which you don’t whine and you don’t do therapy. How can she protect her children best while also living her own life? She divorces John, even though she knows she’s sacrificing Katie’s love. I wanted the reader to wonder about her motivations and Katie’s reaction. What happens when people can’t talk? In what circumstances should parents hide grown-up truths from their children? Silence leads to all sorts of misconceptions and makes us feel very isolated.
Seeing our parents with clear eyes is exceptionally hard. It’s almost impossible for us to know them fully as human beings, to disentangle ourselves from the emotional bonds that tie us together. They owe us and we owe them, and this can make for a toxic brew.
AML: It also leads to lots of confusion around loyalties. I was really struck by that with the relationship between Lulu and Katie. Katie immediately disbelieves her friend, taking her father’s side, and a lot of the tension in the book comes from the increasingly complicated mental and emotional contortions she must perform to stay loyal to her father.
KS: We become deeply invested in believing that people are who we think they are. When we get it wrong, we see it as a reflection on ourselves, on our own failings, and this can be very disorienting. For Katie, it feels safer to disbelieve her friend and trust the man who raised her so lovingly. Also, I thought the best friend dynamic was especially intriguing, as there’s an intensity and intimacy to those early friendships that’s not entirely dissimilar to a sexual relationship. There’s an enduring loyalty to them, too, and Katie has to struggle with that, because she’s not allowed to feel loyalty toward both her father and her best friend.
I was also interested in exploring this dynamic through Katie’s relationship with Jack, her first love. How much of her memory of him and what they shared is actually real? How does memory change reality? She’s invested in believing Jack is the only person who really knows her and in the belief that through him she might be able to find herself again. These relationships we have as teenagers impact us for the rest of our lives.
AML: It’s riveting to watch the changes in Katie’s loyalty, the slow unspooling of her belief system. To what extent was that trajectory inspired by your personal experience?
KS: I know Katie, because her psychological journey was mine, and not just around issues related to this particular topic but around relationships in general. Being loyal was a trait I highly valued; it defined my way of seeing myself. As I’ve matured, I’ve had to reassess that. I strongly believe in values such as generosity, steadiness, and trustworthiness, but I’ve come to think that loyalty is misunderstood and overrated.
Some years ago, I heard Colum McCann talk about “radical empathy,” and it
really stuck with me. Radical empathy happens when we tell each other’s stories, he says; it allows us to know each other in spite of our differences. All good, right? But blind empathy is often destructive and unearned. That’s why writers like me spend years on our books: we’re working hard to untangle and understand these human impulses.
I thought about this a lot over the years I taught writing in prisons. Every human being has a story, and there’s power both in the telling and in the listening. And yet—where do right and wrong fit into the picture? Is there a limit to empathy and loyalty?
AML: What do you most hope readers take away from the experience of reading The Forgotten Hours?
KS: My mission is pretty simple: I want readers to see how this story might relate in various ways to their own lives and draw strength from it.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
This book is set in two very different places at two pivotal times in Katie’s life. In what ways do you think the two timelines contrast and play off each other in terms of theme? How do the style and tone of the past chapters set at Eagle Lake embody the notion of “forgotten hours”?
In every case in which a person is accused of wrongdoing, there are others caught in the middle who have divided loyalties: mothers, fathers, children, siblings, friends, lovers. Have you had this experience, and if so, in what way? How is this story different because it’s told from the point of view of a “peripheral victim,” rather than from the accuser’s or accused’s perspective?
After her family falls apart, Katie tries to reinvent herself, first in college and then in New York City. Do you think she succeeds? In what ways is her struggle to break free from the influence of her parents a normal process of maturation, and in what ways is it a product of her trauma?
The girls are mischievous teenagers, reveling in summertime freedom. How much do you think Katie is right in believing her behavior that night contributed to the choices Lulu made? Why does she blame herself?
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